Saturday, December 8, 2018

Buhari: Not a Clone but a Clown

Last Tuesday was an awkward day for me here in the United
States. It wasn’t just that President Buhari’s ill-advised response to the insanely
absurd IPOB whispering campaign that he is a body double from Sudan was the
butt of hurtful jokes in the American news media, all that my students wanted
to talk to me about was this issue.

“While your president certainly isn’t a clone, he sure is a
clown,” one student said. Although this jibe jabbed at my national self-esteem,
it’s painfully accurate nonetheless. Why would someone who isn’t a clone (IPOB
actually called him a body double, not a clone) deign to dignify such implausible
absurdity with a response— and in a foreign country, to boot?

Several readers of this column had importuned me to share my
thoughts on the allegation that it’s a Sudanese body double who is pretending
to be our president, but I always responded that the suggestion is so
ludicrous, so off-the-wall, and so patently illogical that even acknowledging
it would be an exercise in the legitimization of stupidity. But the president,
who is at the receiving end of this fatuous folly, chose to mainstream and legitimize
it.

Many people said the president’s protestation that he wasn’t
a clone was intended as good-natured banter. I believe them. It’s obvious that
Buhari fancies himself as possessing an uncommonly rich faculty of humor precisely
because his inanely fawning aides habitually make exaggerated pretenses to
finding his often unfunny jokes hilarious.

But it’s part of the performances of power that sycophantic
subordinates who want to ingratiate themselves with people in power have to
learn to laugh at their bosses’ jokes, even if the jokes are flat, unwitty,
inappropriate, and humorless. This fact creates a false self-construal in the
bosses of their matchless capacity for humor, and predisposes them to thoughtless,
inapt jokes. When my American student
said Buhari was a “clown,” he was acknowledging that the president was joking
when he said he wasn’t a “clone,” but he was also communicating the fact that
the subject-matter of the joke was beneath the self-worth of a president.

Many times, Buhari comes across as someone with an
insatiable gluttony for self-ridicule in his awkward attempts at humor. In the
same Poland where he protested that he was not a clone, to give another example,
he joked that he would no longer whine about the problems he inherited from PDP,
which aggrandized his ineptitude before the world.

He also jokes about having an irresistible urge to run away
from Nigeria when the obligations of governance get to him. In November 2016,
for instance, he joked that he “felt like absconding because 27 out of 36
states in Nigeria cannot pay salaries.” Again, in September 2017, he joked thathad farmers witnessed a poor harvest, “I must confide in you that I was
considering which country to run to.”

These are humorless jokes, especially because Buhari has the
unflattering distinction of being Nigeria’s president who has spent the most time abroad. In a September 16, 2017
column, I characterized this tendency as “Buhari’s obsessive compulsive runawayism.”
Serious business of governance shouldn’t be trivialized with unamusing jokes,
especially by someone whose ineptitude is dramatized by these jokes, whose
incompetence is on steroids.

Nevertheless, although it’s utterly brainsick to even
imagine that a Sudanese body double could successfully take the place of
Buhari, this whole notion of a Buhari imposter in the Presidential Villa
resonates because it captures the vast disconnect between the Buhari Nigerians
thought they elected in 2015 and the bungling, wimpy, aloof, unjust, and inept
Buhari that we have as president now.

Buhari had an unearned reputation as a firm, fearless, just,
disciplined leader who was animated by a restless thirst to transform Nigeria, to
build enduring institutions, to wipe out or at least minimize corruption, and
to bequeath a legacy of justice, fair play, and national cohesion.

But he has turned out
to be an infirm leader who looks the other way when injustice is committed by
his close associates, who disdains the poor, who defends and praises corruption
when it’s committed by people who are loyal to him, who lies interminably, who
has not a clue how to glue the nation and transform lives, and who is consumed
by a monomaniacal obsession to perpetuate himself in power.

For people who invested hopes in an idealized Buhari that
never existed, the Buhari they see now is figuratively a clone. Even his wife,
Aisha Buhari, casts him as a helpless, ineffective, and isolated leader who is
held prisoner by an evil, sneaky, corrupt, vulturous, and conniving two-man
cabal.

In a speech she delivered at a conference on Tuesday, the
Wife of the President said her husband’s administration “achieved a lot but
could have achieved more or even achieved all it had in one year but for two
people in government who will never allow things to move fast,” adding that she
was “disappointed in men who rather than fight these two men will go to them in
the night begging for favour.”

This isn’t new information for many of us who are familiar
with the disabling dysfunction and cronyism in the Presidential Villa, but
coming from the president’s wife, even Buhari’s hardcore admirers are discomfited
by the image of an ineffectual Buhari who is inexorably hamstrung by no-good,
unelected puppeteers that he appointed. Even to these hardcore supporters, the
Buhari they see now is figuratively a clone of the Buhari they elected.

Buhari is also the first and only Nigerian president on
record who has openly confessed to being disaffiliated from many of the signature
policies of his own administration. For instance, he publicly disagreed with
the devaluation of the naira. “How much benefit can we derive from this
ruthless devaluation of the naira?” he told business leaders who paid him a visit
at the Presidential Villa on June 27, 2016. “I'm not an economist neither a
businessman - I fail to appreciate what is the economic explanation."

So, get this: we have a president whose wife says is
controlled and crippled by two unelected people that he appointed. This same
president is also disconnected from, and obviously makes no input to, the major
policies of his administration. How is he different from a clone or a body
double? The hard, painful truth is that Nigeria has no president now. Buhari is
merely a figurehead who is battling with the ravages of aging and who is
unaware of what is going on in the country and around him.

If there is anything that this unhinged “cloning” or “double-body”
narrative has dramatized, it is that we have a president who isn’t in charge,
who holds the horns of the cow while others milk it, who should be resting, not
ruling. This is dangerous for the country. Four more years of this will sink
Nigeria irretrievably.

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About Me

Dr. Farooq Kperogi is a professor, journalist, newspaper columnist, author, and blogger based in Greater Atlanta, USA. He received his Ph.D. in communication from Georgia State University's Department of Communication where he taught journalism for 5 years and won the top Ph.D. student prize called the "Outstanding Academic Achievement in Graduate Studies Award." He earned his Master of Science degree in communication (with a minor in English) from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and won the Outstanding Master's Student in Communication Award. He earned his B.A. in Mass Communication (with minors in English and Political Science) from Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria, where he won the Nigerian Television Authority Prize for the Best Graduating Student. He writes a weekly column for the Nigerian Tribune. His research has won top awards. Read more about him here: https://www.farooqkperogi.com/p/about-me.html